The first step is admitting you have a problem
A line I often use when introducing myself to a client team at an offsite meeting or retreat is, and with apologies to AlAnon, “I’m a recovering Chartered Accountant. The first step is admitting you have a problem!” This is often first as a credibility tool (people trust Chartered Accountants, particularly those who qualified in the Scottish Institute, ICAS.
In addition, though, it is also a device called an “open loop”. I am most often brought in for such events to help them look at what they need to bravely focus on in order to drive change for their business or organisation. At some stage while we are together this will always mean looking at the “elephant in the room”, the problem they don’t want to or perhaps haven’t truly talked about. At that stage, I can first then remind them that the first step is admitting you have a problem, and then move on to potential solutions.
Recognise the problem, then shift to talking about the opportunities.
Three examples today for you of how you can communicate this.
Is life in the UK really as bad as the numbers suggest? Yes, it is
Last week, Tim Harford published a piece called: “Is life in the UK really as bad as the numbers suggest? Yes, it is“, where he laid out in some empirical depth quite how devastatingly poorly the UK economy is performing and has been for decades relative to perceived peers. For example, he notes: “median incomes in the UK are well below those in places such as Norway, Switzerland or the US and well below the average of developed countries. Incomes of the poor, those at the 10th percentile, are lower in the UK than in Slovenia.”
As someone living in the UK but with much of my life living and working elsewhere, I am often painfully aware of the lack of self-awareness that many have in Britain of how “unexceptional” the UK is in so many ways. Tim’s piece intends to have people in the UK admit that there is a problem.
That said, Tim closes with this, with both a sober request to be aware of the problem and then a positive message about possibilities and opportunities:
The UK has many strengths and many resources and has overcome adversity before. But if we are to solve this chronic economic problem together, we first need to acknowledge just how serious — and how stubborn — the issue has become.
You’re not, but you can be!
In late 2004, I flew to Scotland from Cayman to give a keynote speech at their annual tourism conference. The conference theme?: “Scotland – Confident and World Class”. Scotland, the country of my birth and my other “home country”, has a population nearly 100 times larger than Cayman, but at around 5 million people, definitely a small country on the world stage, with particular feelings of being small next to England next door, over 10 times larger.
I had been booked to give that speech about eighteen months earlier, then only two months before the day of my talk, Cayman had been decimated by Hurricane Ivan to a level beyond words. Yet, within six weeks or so, we pulled together and re-opened to tourists. I spoke of that story to the Scottish conference audience, highlighting that small can be beautiful and small can be mighty and that I believed (and still do) that no large country could have pulled together and achieved as monumental a recovery in such a short time.
My summary message?: “Scotland – confident and world-class. Well, you’re not, but you can be!”
It’s not, but it can be
One of my favourite TV series is The Newsroom. Not many may have watched all three seasons, but many have seen the opening scene of the pilot, where Will McAvoy (played by Jeff Daniels) is asked the question: “Why is America the best country in the world?” then, at first, refuses to give a substantive answer, despite being pressed by the panel moderator. However, he then thinks he sees someone in the audience holding up two signs one after the other, the first saying “It’s not” then the second “but it can be”.
I share the video clip below, but first, the transcript, where Will McAvoy finally snapped and spoke truth to stupid:
It’s not the greatest country in the world, professor, that’s my answer.
…there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world. We’re seventh in literacy, twenty-seventh in math, twenty-second in science, forty-ninth in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, number four in labour force, and number four in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defence spending, where we spend more than the next twenty-six countries combined, twenty-five of whom are allies. None of this is the fault of a 20-year-old college student, but you, nonetheless, are without a doubt, a member of the WORST-period-GENERATION-period-EVER-period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about?! Yosemite?!!!
We sure used to be. We stood up for what was right! We fought for moral reasons, we passed and struck down laws for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbours, we put our money where our mouths were, and we never beat our chest. We built great big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases, and cultivated the world’s greatest artists and the world’s greatest economy. We reached for the stars, and we acted like men. We aspired to intelligence; we didn’t belittle it; it didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election, and we didn’t scare so easy. And we were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed. By great men, men who were revered. The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one—America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.